Much Ado about Dancing

What is it about?

The masked dance in 2.1 of Shakespeare's Much Ado about Nothing is revealed to be a dance suite of the type that was popular at the court of Elizabeth. The play as a whole borrows from popular dances -- brawl, galliard, almain, canary ... -- for its structure, images, plot developments, and gender relations. The essay sheds light on the puzzling casting of the company's star dancer William Kempe in the non dancing part of Dogberry.

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Why is it important?

Thoinot Arbeau’s Orchesography (1589) and Sir John Davies's Orchestra are basic texts to revisit the dance/love/marriage cluster in Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing. The play's critique of the social dance, famously voiced by Beatrice in lines assimilating "[W]ooing, wedding, and repenting" to "a Scotch jig, a measure and a cinque-pace," appears with good reason to be articulated throughout in the language of early modern dancing practice as much as / rather than drama.